Contact Details

Areas of Expertise

International Economics

Macroeconomics

Labour

International Finance

Profile

Jeffrey Sheen is a Professor of Economics at Macquarie University. He has been on the faculty of the Universities of Manchester, Essex and Sydney, and has had a visiting appointment at the Reserve Bank of Australia. He has published his research in major international journals, and his interests span international economics, macroeconomics, labour and international finance. He obtained his PhD at the London School of Economics.

Most of his recent research has been in empirical international finance and in macroeconometrics. He is a recognized expert in the analysis of the determinants of foreign exchange intervention, and has published a number of papers on interventions by the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Bank of Japan and the Fed. He has recently published papers in highly ranked journals on the following topics: intranational purchasing power parity, a state-disaggregated macro model of Australian labour markets, consumption risk-sharing within Australia and with New Zealand, non-linear Taylor rules for Australian monetary policy, state space models to estimate potential output and its normal growth rate, the natural rate of unemployment and interest, cyclical drivers of Australian labour market flows, dynamic factor models of business cycle linkages to financial markets, and the implications of animal spirits expectations for monetary policy design. In 2008-10, his research was funded by a large Discovery grant awarded by the Australian Research Council.

His Macroeconomics textbook written with Olivier Blanchard is widely used in Australia, and its third edition, which appeared in 2009, has the dominant share in its market. He is the managing Editor of the Economic Record, a member of the Central Council of the Economic Society of Australia and is on the editorial board of the Review of Development Finance. He is a member of the Methods in International Finance Network, hosted at the University of Maastricht, which includes members from Europe, North America and China.

Research areas

Prof Sheen's research has focused on the interaction of exchange rate risk and central bank behaviour, on the way financial and other risks are distributed, and on measuring how risk has affected key macroeconomic variables.

Media Mentions

Prof Jeffrey Sheen from the Department of Economics was mentioned in the Australian Financial Review as a shadow board member advising the RBA to keep the official cash rate on hold to begin clearing the ground for rises late in 2014.

Professor Jeffrey Sheen says we need "more time is needed to see what will happen to the real exchange rate".

Excerpt:

"The June 2013 Australian labour force figures show a rise in the unemployment rate to 5.7%, but that was due to a rise in participation. CPI inflation remains benign. Business confidence in Australia is stronger in 2013 than 2012. The nominal trade‐ weighted exchange rate has depreciated 12.3% since March 2013, but the real trade‐weighted exchange rate has only depreciated by 2% so far – therefore more time is needed to see what will happen to the real exchange rate. Given these facts, my recommendations are unchanged from last month."